3D Continues Its March

Behind the scenes at NAB ShowJune 27, 2014

Jay
Ankeney

Just when you thought it was safe
to go back into the water… 3D is
back and bigger and better than ever.
Maybe not at the 2014 NAB Show, where
2D/4K screens pushed most 3D displays
out of most exhibits, but, from what I was
able to uncover in the Las Vegas Convention
Center, 3D is on the verge of living up
to its full potential both at home and in the
cinema. Get ready for practical, glasses-free
3DTV sets and an eye-boggling quantum
leap in 3D theatrical presentations.

Here in the United States many have
become jaded about the future of 3D, but
around the world it is booming. Last January, TechNavio, a technology research and
advisory company, released a report predicting
“the Global 3D Flat Panel TV market
to grow at a compound annual growth rate
of 15.4 percent over the period 2013–
2018. One of the key factors contributing
to this market growth is the increase in 3D
content broadcasts.”

Theatrical 3D product is also gushing
out of Hollywood to an eager worldwide
market. On May 21, during the Cannes Film
Festival, Jim Chabin, president of the International
3D Society, told crowds at the
American Pavilion, “15 of the top-grossing
movies of 2014 were seen in 3D, and we
predict 2015 will break new 3D box office
records.”

DITCH THE GLASSES
However, many potential 3D fans are still
holding their breath until we can dump the
glasses. Autostereoscopic (glasses-free) 3D
flat panel displays, or AS3DTV sets, have
been around for a considerable time and
until now many, like me, have been skeptical
about them. But during the 2008
3D BizExpo held at the Universal
Sheraton in Hollywood, Philips Electronics
took a major leap forward by
introducing their WOWvx 3D system
on a 56-inch Quad Full HD set
(see “All Dressed Up But Nothing to
Show?,” Dec. 3, 2008).

TV set with Dolby 3D format

WOWvx utilized left/right pairs
of images called “views” coming out
of the screen, and upped the number
from previous attempts limited
to seven or eight views suitable only as
a digital signage gimmick to 46 coupled
images that could more comfortably be
watched in a home theater. Lack of interest
and a paucity of 3D content led Philips
to abandon the project in April 2009, but
seeds had been planted that now are bearing
fruit.

Several companies have licensed parts of
the Philips technology, most notably Dolby
Laboratories, building on it to produce truly
effective 3D images without glasses. All of
them provide a realistic depth illusion that
mostly recedes back into the screen, called
“negative parallax,” instead of the pop-out-at-
you effect attained by glasses-based approaches.
Now even this non-believer has
been convinced they are on the verge of
cracking this direct-viewing 3D challenge.

The first to hit the market with a true
AS3DTV screen may be Dimenco who,
based in the Netherlands, has had a Kickstarter
campaign to raise funds to produce
a glasses-free home 3D set utilizing a lenticular
optical filter overlaid onto a 39-
inch 4K panel. In fact, Dimenco has been
building the displays used by several other
companies to show prototypes of their AS-
3DTV processes for several years.

Dimenco CEO Maarten Tobias told me if
the Kickstarter campaign achieves its goal
of 199,000 Euros ($272,948.40) by June
12, 2014, those who pledged 899 Euros
($1,233.07) will get their own glasses-free
3D display sent to them, although additional
shipping costs are still to be determined. As
usual, potential backers are enticed by a sliding
scale, so those who fork over 4,999 Euros
($6,855.13) will be flown to Amsterdam
to pick up their AS3DTV’s in person. At press
time the campaign had not met its goal.

“This set will include Dolby 3D image
processing licensed from Dolby and their
2D-to-3D conversion technology, but will
require an external HDMI tuner or OTT
box,” Tobias said. “If our Kickstarter campaign
is successful we should start delivering
sets on September 20th.”

Fortunately, the competition for glasses-free
3D is heating up. Another contender
is Stream TV Networks who have developed
their own 3D format called “Ultra-D.”
Stream TV is a Philadelphia-based company
that is building on 3D concepts partially
developed by Philips, and intends to
license its Ultra-D hardware/software system
to other set manufacturers.

Bud Robertson, vice president of business
development at Stream TV, said Ultra-
D involves a multilayered lens system
bonded onto a 4K panel, and image processing
that takes advantage of those optics
on a sub-pixel level.

“Instead of sending out discrete left/
right views, our screen presents a light
field that represents depth,” Robertson
said. “We are using a variety of refractive
and diffractive indexes to create the light
field through our proprietary optical system
to bend the light and thereby create
the impression of depth.”

The first AS3DTVs using Ultra-D hardware and software are already being manufactured
by Pegatron. Stream TV is in negotiation
with other set makers such as Hisense
(maker of Best Buy’s Insignia brand) and
also Konka, China’s leading consumer electronics
enterprise. The first Ultra-D displays
should be on the market by the end of the
year, with mass production in 2015.

READY FOR PRIMETIME?
Dolby Laboratories has been demonstrating
their own Dolby 3D format at several
past NAB Shows, and what they had at
their booth this year reflected noticeable
advances in the art.

“We’ve been showing prototypes in
conjunction with Philips over the past
three years,” said Roland Vlaicu, senior director,
broadcast imaging at Dolby Laboratories.
“But now we feel the technology
has been refined enough to introduce into
home theater.”

Dolby plans to implant their chip sets
into several manufacturers’ AS3DTV sets, using
their proprietary algorithms to render
decoded 3D video through a 4K lenticular
panel. The Dolby approach delivers multiple
2-degree viewing cones that can be seen
without glasses. With a 120-degree practical
viewing angle from a typical LCD screen,
this can involve upwards of 60 viewing
cones, each containing 28 L/R image pairs.

Roland Vlaicu

Dolby 3D is agnostic about presentation
technologies and can be adopted for either
lenticular or parallax barrier filters on the
display. With their approach, the resulting
3D images are necessarily cut down to HD
for each eye, but they also can switch off
those filters to provide the full 4K image
density in 2D.

“The challenge is to make this a seamless
high-quality experience,” Vlaicu said.
“We have been working on a balance between
the number of views, the depth that
can be perceived and the available resolution.
We feel it is now ready for prime time.”

Dolby has shown prototypes to several
manufacturers, mostly Chinese OEMs, and
at this year’s International CES they displayed
an 85-inch 8K version from Sharp.

“We will likely present the first shipping
models later this year for the Chinese
market because of the high interest over
there,” Vlaicu said, “and we are still observing
the market in the U.S. We know that
inferior product introductions of various
3D formats have hindered American acceptance
in the past, so we want to do it
right. But if things work out properly, sets
equipped with Dolby 3D-licensed technology
may hit the [United] States next year.”

As impressive as the AS3DTV advances
at NAB Show were, the 3D revelation that
crowned my Vegas experience was the
6P digital cinema laser projection demo
seen in Christie’s Innovation Theater in the
South Hall. I’m still spinning about it.

It’s such a major watershed in optimum
3D presentation that we’ll focus on it next
month.

Jay Ankeney is a freelance editor and
post-production consultant based in Los
Angeles. Write him at JayAnkeney@mac.com.